Mike and I have had our heads down for most of the year working on our next project (which we are INCREDIBLY excited about, but not yet ready to talk about publicly).

We’re at the point where we need design help, and we need help with everything: branding / identity, usability / UX, CSS / HTML production, etc. As a side effect of looking for great designers, we’ve gotten an interesting look into the state of the design economy.

For UX and identity, we started by looking for the designers we really want to work with (mostly high end) and going down the list. These guys are busy! Every firm we’ve contacted is working at capacity, and if anything, they are looking to staff up in order to deal with the workload. Even though that makes our job harder, I like the fact that these guys are busy.

For CSS / HTML production, we went the opposite route. Because of the nature of our product, we will probably need to work with multiple designers of this type and we put out an open call for submissions on Craigslist. After posting last night (at around 9pm) I found my inbox filled with seventy responses. Some of them were terrible, but some of them were great.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Craigslist job listing, so I don’t have a good baseline. Is getting 70 responses overnight for a design gig typical? And what’s the best explanation for the disparity between how busy theUX and branding guys were vs. the HTML / CSS guys? Is it the difference between looking at high end firms vs. doing a craigslist ad? (probably). Or is it that these two design disciplines have different economics?

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